implies lovable people dwelling in the charmed circle,--tender hearts,
quick to respond to every word of love, every whisper of confidence,
every caress. The homeless man is the restless and unhappy man, for
ever seeking what he cannot find. The homeless woman is still more to
be pitied, being entirely and hopelessly out of her natural element.
And the marked tendency which exists nowadays to avoid home life is
wholly mischievous. Women complain that home is “dull,” “quiet,”
“monotonous,” “lonely,” and blame it for all sorts of evils which exist
only in themselves. If a woman cannot be a few hours alone without
finding her house “dull,” her mind must be on the verge of lunacy.
The sense of being unable to endure one’s own company augurs ill for
the moral equilibrium. To preserve good health and sound nerves,
women should always make it a rule to be quite alone at least for a
couple of hours in the course of each day. Let them take that space
to think, to read, to rest, and mentally review their own thoughts,
words and actions in the light of a quiet conscience-time of pause and
meditation. Home is the best place so to rest and meditate,--and the
hours that are spent in thinking how to make that home happier will
never be wasted. It should be very seriously borne in mind that it is
only in the home life that marriage can be proved successful or the
reverse, and, to quote Mr. Lecky once more:
“A moral basis of sterling qualities is of capital importance. A
true, honest and trustworthy nature, capable of self-sacrifice and
self-restraint, should rank in the first line, and after that, a
kindly, equable and contented temper, a power of sympathy, a habit
of looking at the better and brighter side of men and things. Of
intellectual qualities, judgment, tact and order, are perhaps the
most valuable.... Grace and the charm of manner will retain their
full attraction to the last. They brighten in innumerable ways
the little things of life, and life is mainly made up of little
things, exposed to petty frictions, and requiring small decisions
and small sacrifices. Wide interests and large appreciations
are in the marriage relation more important than any great
constructive or creative talent, and the power to soothe, to
sympathize, to counsel and to endure than the highest qualities
of the hero or the saint. It is by this alone that the married
life attains its full perfection.”
And when we hear, as we so often do, of the complete failure and
deplorable disaster attending many marriages, let us look for the
root of the evil at its foundation,--namely the decay of home life,
the neglect and avoidance of home and home duties,--the indifference
to, or scorn of home influence. For whenever any woman, rich or poor,
high in rank or of humble estate, throws these aside, and turns her
back on Home, her own natural, beautiful and thrice-blessed sphere of
action, she performs what would be called the crazed act of a queen,
who, called to highest sovereignty, casts away her crown, breaks her
sceptre, tramples on her royal robes, and steps from her throne,
_down_;--down into the dust of a saddened world’s contempt.
SOCIETY AND SUNDAY
According to the latest views publicly expressed by both Christian and
un-Christian clerics, it would appear that twentieth-century Society is
not at one with Sunday. It no longer keeps the seventh day “holy.” It
will not go to church. It declines to listen to dull sermons delivered
by dull preachers. It openly expresses its general contempt for the
collection-plate. It reads its ‘up-to-date’ books and magazines, and
says: “The Sabbath is a Jewish institution. And though the spirit of
the Jew pervades my whole composition and constitution, and though
I borrow money of the Jew whenever I find it convenient, there is
no reason why I should follow the Jew’s religious ritual. The New
Testament lays no stress whatever upon the necessity of keeping the
seventh day holy. On the contrary, it tells us that ‘the Sabbath was
made for man, not man for the Sabbath.’”
This is true enough. It is a difficult point to get over. And despite
the fact that the sovereign rulers of the realm most strictly set the
example to all their subjects of attending Divine service at least once
on Sunday, this example is just the very one among the various leading
patterns of life offered by the King and Queen which Society blandly
sets aside with a smile. For, notwithstanding the constant painstaking
production of exquisitely printed Prayer-books, elegantly bound in
ivory, silver, morocco leather, and silk velvet, Society is not often
seen nowadays with these little emblems of piety in its be-ringed and
be-bangled hands. It prefers a pack of cards. Its ears are more attuned
to the hissing rush of the motor than to the solemn sound of sacred
psalmody; and the dust of the high-road, compounded with the oil-stench
of the newest and fastest automobile, offers a more grateful odour
to its nostrils than the perfume of virginal lilies on the altar of
worship. _Autres temps, autres mœurs!_ People who believe in nothing
have no need of prayer. A social “set” that grabs all it can for itself
without a thank-you to either God or devil is not moved to praise. Self
and the Hour! That is the motto and watchword of Society to-day, and
after Self and the Hour, what then? Why, the Deluge, of course! And,
as happened in olden time, and will happen again, general drowning,
stiflement, and silence.
There is certainly much to regret and deplore in the lack of
serious thought, the neglect of piety, and the scant reverence for
sacred things which, taken together, make up a spirit of callous
indifferentism in our modern life, such as is likely to rob the nation
in future of its backbone and nerve. It is a spirit which is gradually
transforming the social community from thinking, feeling, reasonable
human beings into a mere set of gambolling kangaroos, whose chief
interest would seem to be centred in jumping over each other’s backs,
or sitting on their haunches, grinning foolishly and waving their short
fore-paws at one another with antic gestures of animal delight. They
never get any “forrader,” as it were. They do nothing particularly
useful. They are amused, annoyed, excited, or angry (according to their
different qualities of kangaroo nature) when one jumps a little higher
than the other, or waves its paws a little more attractively; but
their sentiments are as temporary as their passions. There is nothing
to be got out of them any way, but the jumping and the paw-waving. At
the same time it is extremely doubtful as to whether taking them to
church on Sundays would do them good, or bring them back to the human
condition. Things are too far gone--the metamorphosis is too nearly
accomplished. One day is the same as another to the Society kangaroo.
All days are suitable to his or her “hop, skip, and a jump.” But shall
there be no “worship”? What should a kangaroo worship? No “rest”? Why
should a kangaroo rest? “Listen to the Reverend Mr. Soulcure’s sermon,
and learn how to be good!” Ya-ah! One can hear the animal scream as he
or she turns a somersault at the mere suggestion and scuttles away!
Society’s neglect of Sunday observance in these early days of the
new century is due to many things, chiefest among these being the
incapacity of the clergy to inspire interest in their hearers or to
fix the attention of the general public. It is unfortunate that this
should be so, but so it is. The ministers of religion fail to seize the
problems of the time. They forget, or wilfully ignore, the discoveries
of the age. Yet in these could be found endless subject-matter for the
divinest arguments. Religion and science, viewed broadly, do not clash
so much as they combine. To the devout and deeply studious mind, the
marvels of science are the truths of religion made manifest. But this
is what the clergy seem to miss persistently out of all their teaching
and preaching. Take, for example, the text: “In My Father’s house there
are many mansions.” What a noble discourse could be made hereon of
some of the most sublime facts of science!--of the powers of the air,
of the currents of light, of the magnificent movements of the stars in
their courses, of the plenitude and glory of innumerable solar systems,
all upheld and guided by the same Intelligent Force which equally
upholds and guides the destinies of man! Unhappily for the world in
general, and for the churches in particular, preachers who select
texts from Scripture in order to extract therefrom some instructive
lesson that shall be salutary for their congregations, do not always
remember the symbolic or allegorical manner in which such texts were
originally spoken or written. To many of them the “literal” meaning is
alone apparent, and they see in the “many mansions” merely a glorified
Park Lane or Piccadilly, adorned with rows of elegantly commonplace
dwelling-houses built of solid gold. Their conceptions of the “Father’s
house” are sadly limited. They cannot shake off the material from the
spiritual, or get away from themselves sufficiently to understand or
enter into the dumb craving of all human nature for help, for sympathy,
for love--for sureness in its conceptions of God--such sureness as
shall not run counter to the proved results of reason. For reason is
as much the gift of God as speech, and to kill one’s intellectual
aspiration in order, as some bigots would advise, to serve God more
completely is the rankest blasphemy. The wilful refusal to use a great
gift merely insults the Giver.
It is by obstinately declining to watch the branching-out, as it
were, of the great tree of Christianity in forms which are not narrow
or limited, but spacious and far-reaching, that the clergy have in
a great measure lost much that they should have retained. Society
has slipped altogether from their hold. Society sees for itself that
too many clerics are either blatant or timorous. Some of them bully;
others crawl. Some are all softness to the wealthy; all harshness to
the poor. Others, again, devote themselves to the poor entirely, and
neglect the wealthy, who are quite as much, if not more, in need of
a “soul cure” as the most forlorn Lazarus that ever lay in the dust
of the road of life. None of them seem able to cope with the great
dark wave of infidelity and atheism which has swept over the modern
world stealthily, but overwhelmingly, sucking many a struggling soul
down into the depths of suicidal despair. And Society, making up its
mind that it is neither edified nor entertained by going to church on
Sunday, stays away, and turns Sunday generally to other uses. It is
not particular as to what these uses are, provided they prove amusing.
The old-fashioned notion of a “day of rest” or a “good” Sunday can be
set aside with the church and the clergyman; the one desirable object
of existence is “not to be bored.” The spectre of “boredom” is always
gliding in at every modern function, like the ghost of Banquo at
Macbeth’s feast. To pacify and quash this terrible bogie is the chief
aim and end of all the social kangaroos. The Sunday’s observance used
to be the bogie’s great “innings”; but, with an advance in manners and
morals, _nous avons changé tout cela_! And Society spends its Sundays
now in a fashion which, if its great-grandmamma of the early Victorian
era could only see its ways and doings, would so shock the dear,
virtuous old lady that she would yearn to whip it and shut it up in a
room for years on bread and water. And there is no doubt that such a
wholesome régime would do it a power of good!
At the present interesting period of English history, Sunday appears
to be devoutly recognized among the Upper Ten as the great “bridge”
day. It is quite the fashion--the “swagger” thing--to play bridge
all and every Sunday, when and whenever possible. During the London
“season,” the Thames serves as a picturesque setting for many of these
seventh-day revelries. Little gambling-parties are organized “up the
river,” and houses are taken from Saturday to Monday by noted ladies of
the half-world, desirous of “rooking” young men, in the sweet seclusion
of their “country cots by the flowing stream”--an ambition fully
realized in the results of the Sunday’s steady play at bridge from noon
till midnight. At a certain military centre not far from London, too,
the Sunday “gaming” might possibly call for comment. It is privately
carried on, of course, but--tell it not in Gath!--there is an officer’s
wife--there are so many officers’ wives!--but this one in particular,
more than the others, moves me to the presumption of a parody on the
Immortal Bard, thus:
An officer’s wife had play-cards in her lap--
And dealt and dealt. “What tricks!” quoth I!
“They’re tricks, you bet!” the smiling cheat replied--
“My husband is ‘on duty’ gone,
And ‘green’ young subalterns are all my game,
And till they’re drained of gold and silver, too,
I’ll do, I’ll do, I’ll do!”
And she does “do.” She has found out the way to make those “green young
subalterns” pay her bills and ruin themselves. It is a thoroughly
up-to-date manner of spending the Sunday.
Country-house “week-end” parties are generally all bridge-parties.
They are all carefully selected, with an eye to the main chance. The
“play” generally begins on Saturday evening, and goes on all through
Sunday up to midnight. One woman, notorious for her insensate love of
gambling, lately took lessons in “cheating” at bridge before joining
her country-house friends. She came away heavier in purse by five
hundred pounds, but of that five hundred, one hundred and fifty had
been won from a foolish little girl of eighteen, known to be the
daughter of a very wealthy, but strict father. When the poor child
was made to understand the extent of her losses at bridge, she was
afraid to go home. So she purchased some laudanum “for the toothache,”
and tried to poison herself by swallowing it. Fortunately, she was
rescued before it was too late, and her Spartan “dad,” with tears of
joy in his eyes, paid the money she had lost at cards thankfully, as
a kind of ransom to Death. But she was never again allowed to visit
at that “swagger” house where she had been “rooked” so unmercifully.
And when we remember how fond Society is of bragging of its little
philanthropies, its “bazaars” and carefully-calculated “charities,” we
may, perhaps, wonder whether, among the list of good and noble deeds
it declares itself capable of, it would set its face against bridge,
and make “gambling-parties” once for all unfashionable and in “bad
form”? This would be true philanthropy, and would be more productive
of good than any amount of regular church attendance. For there is no
doubt that very general sympathy is accorded to people who find that
going to church is rather an irksome business. It is not as if they
were often taught anything wonderfully inspiring or helpful there. They
seldom have even the satisfaction of hearing the service read properly.
The majority of the clergy are innocent of all elocutionary art. They
read the finest passages of Scripture in the sing-song tone of a clerk
detailing the items of a bill. It is a soothing style, and quickly
induces sleep; but that is its only recommendation.
When not playing bridge, Society’s “Sunday observance” is motoring.
Flashing and fizzling all over the place, it rushes here, there, and
everywhere, creating infinite dust, smelling abominably, and looking
uglier than the worst demons in Dante’s “Inferno.” Beauty certainly
goes to the wall in a motor. The hideous masks, goggles, and caps
which help to make up the woman motorist’s driving gear, are enough
to scare the staunchest believer in the eternal attractiveness of the
fair sex, while the general get-up of the men is on a par with that of
the professional stoker or engine-driver. Nevertheless, no reasonable
woman ought to mind other women looking ugly if they like; while men,
of course, are always men, and “masters of the planet,” whether dirty
or clean. And no one should really object to the “motor craze,” seeing
that it takes so many useless people out of one’s immediate horizon
and scatters them far and wide over the surface of the earth. Society
uses Sunday as a special day for this “scattering,” and perhaps it
is doing itself no very great harm. It is getting fresh air, which
it needs; it is “going the pace,” which, in its fevered condition of
living fast, so as to die more quickly, is natural to it; and it is
seeing persons and places it never saw before in the way of country
nooks and old-fashioned roadside inns, and rustic people, who stare at
it with unfeigned amusement, and wonder “what the world’s a’-comin’
to!” Possibly it learns more in a motor drive through the heart of
rural England than many sermons in church could teach it. The only
thing one would venture to suggest is that in passing its Sundays in
this fashion, Society should respect the Sundays of those who still
elect to keep the seventh day as a day of rest. Fashionable motorists
might avoid dashing recklessly through groups of country people who
are peacefully wending their way to and from church. They might “slow
down.” They might take thoughtful heed of the little children who play
unguardedly about in many a village street. They might have some little
consideration for the uncertain steps of feeble and old persons who
are perchance blind or deaf, and who neither see the “motor” nor hear
the warning blast of its discordant horn. In brief, it would not hurt
Society to spend its Sundays with more thought for others than Itself.
For the bulk and mass of the British people--the people who _are_
Great Britain--still adhere to the sacred and blessed institution of a
“day of rest,” even if it be not a day of sermons. To thousands upon
thousands of toiling men and women, Sunday is still a veritable God’s
day, and we may thank God for it! Nay, more; we should do our very
best to keep it as “holy” as we can, if not by listening to sermons,
at least by a pause in our worldly concerns, wherein we may put a stop
on the wheels of work and consider within ourselves as to how and why
we are working. Sunday is a day when we should ask Nature to speak to
us and teach us such things as may only be mastered in silence and
solitude--when the book of poems, the beautiful prose idyll, or the
tender romance, may be our companion in summer under the trees, or
in winter by a bright fire--and when we may stand, as it were, for a
moment and take breath on the threshold of another week, bracing our
energies to meet with whatever that week may hold in store for us,
whether joy or sorrow. Few nations, however, view Sunday in this light.
On the Continent it has long been a day of mere frivolous pleasure--and
in America I know not what it is, never having experienced it. But the
British Sunday, apart from all the mockery and innuendo heaped upon it
by the wits and satirists of the present time and of bygone years, used
to be a strong and spiritually saving force in the national existence.
Dinner-parties, with a string band in attendance, and a Parisian
singer of the “café chantant” to entertain the company afterwards, were
once unknown in England on a Sunday. But such “Sabbath” entertainments
are quite ordinary now. The private house copies the public
restaurant--more’s the pity!
Nevertheless, though Society’s Sunday has degenerated into a day of
gambling, guzzling, and motoring in Great Britain, it is well to
remember that Society in itself is so limited as to be a mere bubble
on the waters of life--froth and scum, as it were, that rises to the
top, merely to be skimmed off and thrown aside in any serious national
crisis. The People are the life and blood of the nation, and to them
Sunday remains still a “day of rest,” though, perhaps, not so much as
in old time a day of religion. And that it is not so much a day of
religion is because so many preachers have failed in their mission.
They have lost grip. There is no cause whatever for their so losing it,
save such as lies within themselves. There has been no diminution in
the outflow of truth from the sources of Divine instruction, but rather
an increase. The wonders of the universe have been unfolded in every
direction by the Creator to His creature. There is everything for the
minister of God to say. Yet how little is said! “Feed my sheep!” was
the command of the Master. But the sheep have cropped all the old ways
of thought down to the bare ground, and their inefficient shepherds
now know not where to lead them, though their Lord’s command is as
imperative as ever. So the flock, being hungry, have broken down the
fences of tradition, and are scampering away in disorder to fresh
fields and pastures new. Society may be, and is, undoubtedly to blame
for its lax manner of treating religion and religious observances; but,
with all its faults, it is not so blameworthy as those teachers of the
Christian faith, whose lack of attention to its needs and perplexities
help to make it the heaven-scorning, God-denying, heart-sore, weary,
and always dissatisfied thing it is. Society’s Sunday is merely a
reflex of Society’s own immediate mood--the mood of killing time at all
costs, even to the degradation of its own honour, for want of something
better to do!
THE “STRONG” BOOK OF THE ISHBOSHETH
There are two trite sayings in common use with us all--one is:
“Circumstances alter cases,” which is English; the other is: “Autres
temps, autres mœurs,” which is French. But there lacks any similar
epigrammatic expression to convey the complete and curious change of
meaning, which by a certain occult literary process becomes gradually
attached to quite ordinary words of our daily speech. “Strong,” for
instance, used to mean strength. It means it still, I believe, in the
gymnasium. But in very choice literary circles it means “unclean.”
This is strange, but true. For some time past the gentle and credulous
public has remained in childlike doubt as to what was really implied
by a “strong” book. The gentle and credulous public has been under the
impression that the word “strong” used by the guides, philosophers, and
friends who review current fiction in the daily Press, meant a powerful
style, a vigorous grip, a brilliant way of telling a captivating and
noble story. But they have, by slow and painful degrees, found out
their mistake in this direction, and they know now that a “strong”
book means a nasty subject indelicately treated. Whereupon they are
beginning to “sheer off” any book labelled by the inner critical
faculty as “strong.” This must be admitted as a most unfortunate
fact for those who are bending all their energies upon the writing
of “strong” books, and who are wasting their powers on discussing
what they euphoniously term “delicate and burning subjects”; but it
is a hopeful and blessed sign of increasing education and widening
intellectual perception in the masses, who will soon by their sturdy
common sense win a position which is not to be “frighted with false
fire.” Congratulating the proprietors of _Great Thoughts_ on its
thousandth number, the sapient _Westminster Gazette_ lately chortled
forth the following lines: “A career such as our contemporary has
enjoyed, shows that the taste for good reading is wider than some
would have us believe. We wish _Great Thoughts_ continued success.”
O wise judge! O learned judge! The public taste for good reading is
only questioned when writers whom Thou dislikest are read by the base
million!